June 17, 2016

We were not completely surprised by some of the disturbing details emerging from the Islamist terrorist massacre in Orlando, Florida. In particular, we were already aware of the killer’s employer. Our Corruption Chronicles blog summed things up:

The ISIS terrorist who committed the worst mass shooting in U.S. history worked for a security company contracted by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to protect federal facilities nationwide and transport illegal immigrants apprehended in the southern border region. Earlier this month Judicial Watch launched an investigation into the Florida-based security firm, G4S, after breaking a story about illegal immigrants being quietly transported from the Mexican border to Phoenix and getting released without proper processing or court appearance documents.

G4S was contracted by DHS to drive the group of illegal aliens, classified as Other Than Mexican (OTM), from the Border Patrol’s Tucson Sector where they were in custody to a Phoenix bus station where they went their separate way. The OTMs were from Honduras, Colombia, El Salvador and Guatemala and Border Patrol officials told Judicial Watch they were in custody for a couple of days and ordered to call family members in the U.S. so they could purchase a bus ticket. Authorities didn’t bother checking the identity of the U.S. relatives or if they’re in the country legally, according to a Border Patrol official directly involved in the matter.

Judicial Watch was on the scene when several vanloads of OTMs arrived at the Phoenix Greyhound station on Buckeye Road just a few days ago. A photo accompanying our story shows one of the uniformed G4S guards that drove a vanload of OTMs from Tucson to Phoenix earlier this month. G4S claims to be the world’s leading security solutions group with operations in more than 100 countries and 610,000 employees. G4S has more than 50,000 employees in the U.S. and its domestic headquarters is in Jupiter, Florida. Judicial Watch has filed a number of public records requests to get more information involving the arrangement between G4S and the government, specifically the transport of illegal immigrants from the Mexican border to other parts of the country.

The investigation will expand to include documents and information pertinent to Omar Mir Seddique Mateen, an Afghan-American with two firearms licenses and a security officer license. Early Sunday morning the veteran G4S security guard carried out the savage attack in an Orlando nightclub, killing 49 and injuring dozens of others. A multitude of media reports have confirmed that Mateen worked for G4S for nearly a decade even though he had been investigated by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) for terrorist ties. In one Florida newspaper report the security company confirms that Mateen has been a security guard, with a firearms license, since September 10, 2007. A former co-worker told another Florida media outlet that Mateen regularly made threats of violence and that he was an angry, loud, profane man who used slurs for gay people, blacks, Jews and women.

In 2013 Mateen was investigated by the FBI for terrorism ties and his connections to an American named Moner Mohammad Abu-Salha who carried out a suicide bombing in Syria. Both men are from the Ft. Pierce area in Florida’s so-called “Treasure Coast.” The federal probe didn’t seem to impact Mateen’s work at G4S however, because there was no disruption in his employment, even after he openly praised ISIS.

This is astounding considering that the agency created after 9/11 to prevent another terrorist attack has a $234 million contract with G4S to provide security services for a number of federal agencies, including the nation’s nuclear facilities and the departments of Labor, Justice, Energy, State as well as the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) and Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA). Ironically, the government’s contract with G4S stipulates that the company helps identify “suspected terrorists” trying to enter the U.S. and helps the feds with emergency responses to terror threats.

We will pursue this vigorously, as the Obama administration is too often inept, to put it charitably, in protecting Americans from Islamic terrorists.